In 1966, Jean Rhys wrote a prequel novel and commentary on Jane Eyre called Wide Sargasso Sea. In this, she looks into Bertha’s life before her apparent madness overtook her. Bertha, once named Antoinette until Mr. Rochester makes her change her name, is the heroine, while “dark and brooding” Rochester becomes a “callous villain, cowardly and bullying…who weds for money and uses women for sex, and whose behaviour likely sends his wife mad.” This is a “feminist rewriting” partially based around the author’s own experiences as a woman born in the West Indies in 1890 to a Creole mother and Welsh father. The author stated about Antoinette “She seemed such a poor ghost, I thought I’d like to write her a life.” It is noted that “as Creole Antoinette is mocked by her black neighbours and looked down on by white Europeans…so Jane belongs neither upstairs nor downstairs at Thornfield Hall.”

http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20161019-the-book-that-changed-jane-eyre-forever

“What you want to ignite in others must first burn inside yourself.” – Charlotte Bronte

Crain, Edward E. Historic Architecture in the Caribbean Islands. p. 100 https://ufdc.ufl.edu/AA00004342/00001/3j